Some folks just hate guns. They hate them worse than they hate red meat, bluegrass music and tubs of yogurt which refuse to sport a "fat free" label." They hate them worse than they hate neighborhoods that aren't gated and patrolled, those anachronistic wastelands free of zoning laws and aesthetic committees.

They rail against the right to keep and bear arms because they long ago lost the desire or ability to care for themselves. After all, one afflicted by an anxiety attack at the sight of a full recycling bin or a leaking faucet can hardly be expected to understand self-reliance.

The vast majority of gun-haters reside on the far left side of the ideological fence. Most are snobby elitists who feel it is the government's duty to wipe their noses, spray Bactine on their scraped knees and protect them from life itself. They can't tell you why they hate guns, except to say "guns are violent."

I suggest these people heed the advice of their own role models. As espoused by a plethora of enlightened gurus who aim to heal the national psyche, irrational hatred is based upon fear and ignorance. Oprah, Dr. Phil, Deepak Chopra and the like all provide such insights. By their philosophy, irrational hatred revolves around a refusal to learn about that which is outside one's realm of experience. It is a terror of the unknown, akin to a small child being scared of the boogieman under the bed.

Syndicated columnist Anna Quindlen should study these fonts of wisdom. Judging by her recent column in Newsweek magazine ("Tort Reform At Gunpoint," May 5th, 2003), Anna, the poor soul, is quaking in her Birkenstocks. Her latest tirade against the Second Amendment described her disgust at the passage of "Reckless Lawsuit Pre-emption Legislation" by the House of Representatives.

Now headed to the Senate, this necessary bill is intended to halt frivolous lawsuits, many of which have been aimed directly at the gun industry. It is a response to Clinton era attempts by some city governments and anti-gun organizations to bankrupt firearms manufacturers by making them responsible for the misuse of their product by the lawless.

Quindlen wrote, "If a hospital leaves a sponge in your mid-section, you can sue. If a car dealer sells you a clunker it hadn't properly inspected, you can sue." That's true, but the examples she cites involve work performed incorrectly or products which fail to live up to reasonable standards of operation.

You can't hold a surgeon liable if you take it upon yourself to yank the stitches and poke around your small intestine with a butter knife. You can't sue a car manufacturer because your overly-hormonal son got Cindy Lou pregnant in the back seat of a defect-free vehicle. You can't sue Titlelist because you were beaned in the head with an errant golf ball. You can't sue K-Mart because people laughed at your ugly clothes. If a product works as promised, and if it is sold legally, neither the company that built it nor the firm that sold it should be held accountable for its abuse by the purchaser.

But that's not how Quindlen thinks. She appears to assume that ALL guns are faulty and dangerous, simply because they are guns. By her logic, if a criminal uses a gun in the commission of a crime it is the fault of the manufacturer and the seller. By her logic, individuals are never responsible for their own behavior.

Then again, isn't this the liberal credo? Isn't everything someone else's fault? The fast food outlet is responsible because you ate too much. The casino is responsible because you blew your paycheck at the blackjack table. And of course, guns are responsible for crime.

Quindlen's column -- brimming with insecurity, anger, half-truths and unfounded assumptions -- was a stereotypical excuse to attack the National Rifle Association. "It's easy to find NRA members who say they have no problem with gun licensing or registration," she claims, implying that such is the "sensible attitude" of the average gun owner.

That's just a lie. Most gun owners are vehemently against licensing and registration. True, you probably can find an NRA member here and there ("here and there" being defined as San Francisco and New York) in favor of more government control. But the percentage of the total NRA membership who support such illegal actions are too small to be statistically measurable.

It's also easy to find a Democrat who supports George Bush, but they are hardly a driving force within the liberal cadre. They are certainly not representative of the Democratic Party.

So Quindlen rants and raves against guns, her argument not really against proposed legislation but in fact against the very existence of the Second Amendment. Her transparent motives are evident from the start.

"The House of Representatives recently passed a bill that made a single industry largely immune from lawsuits," she writes. "That industry is the one that makes and sells guns."

Funny how Anna didn't complain when the gun industry was the only one singled out for attack.

(Ron Marr is the founder of The Trout Wrapper, the official magazine of Montana's Tobacco Root Mountains. The publication believes in "big guns, big dogs and big bar tabs." Founded in 1994, The Trout Wrapper says it is "dedicated to hunting down and publicly tormenting the humor impaired," and it espouses the "wholesale abuse of all things politically correct.")